8/30/14, Day, 13,997 (Mercena Day 16): The Great Awake
Oh sure, Mercena had been awake before.
But she had never really been AWAKE…until yesterday.
Much like the cognitive jump from Day Four to Day Five, Day Sixteen saw a huge leap forward in her capacity to engage with the world. She’s staying awake longer, and controlling her focus with much clearer intentionality. It’s almost as if she went to sleep a newborn, and woke up as a baby.
That’s the upside. With a baby, there’s usually a downside, too; and right now, we’re figuring out how to adapt to this baby when she’s on one of her Great Awakes. How can we help her enjoy that time and still catch the moment where she becomes overstimulated and needs to downshift to a nap? She also hasn’t learned yet to easily transition from wide awake to asleep other than through the soporific effects of a big feed.
So, we’re learning together, and we should begin to figure it out right at the moment when she next goes to sleep one baby and wakes up as another.
We had a great visit from Heather’s sister Cathy and our brother-in-law John yesterday, and they graciously cleaned up and cooked us a delicious dinner. We managed to get in a game of cribbage together, and as they cooked, I took an hour to work on KD and The Band. I managed to write nine pages in that short time, and was surprised by a shocking choice KD made that I hadn’t planned.
It really is just about the most enjoyable thing to do: to write, to be surprised by the actions of the characters, to see the shape of a thing cohere into a whole, to feel that incoherent shape and grope towards it in the sweet dark.
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 131 out of 166 days (KD and The Band)
Spanish: 123 out of 166 days
Music: 34 out of 71 days
What small things did I do yesterday to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?”)
- Ate and cooked local, organic, vegetarian food, and used cloth diapers for Mercena;
- Signed a petition calling on world leaders to attend the UN Climate Summit and seek climate change solutions;
- Asked Natural Fruit to drop their lawsuit against anti-slavery activist Any Hall;
- Asked member of Congress to end the culture of misogyny and sexual harassment on capitol hill.
Corinna Schulenburg 